


coming out of my cage [and i've been doing just fine]

by pagan_mint



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Faith is there for one (1) sentence, Gen, Local Furry Jacob Seed At It Again, Oneshot, Second Person Narration, drabble x8, female deputy implied, mention of mild self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 06:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14888966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagan_mint/pseuds/pagan_mint
Summary: When you slap the cuffs on Joseph Seed, he glances at your coffin nails, painted matte black with gloss on the ring fingers.“Vanity,” he murmurs, and it might feel like the sin he labels it as if that was why you’d done it.





	coming out of my cage [and i've been doing just fine]

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "mr. brightside" by the killers

 

You are tired of tasting your own blood on your tongue.

It’s a _very_ small issue, in the grand scheme of everything else going on - cultists, Montanan wildlife, interpersonal drama, the damn Bliss - but it’s something that has been a constant irritation in your life, and ever since the Project at Eden’s Gate started running rampant in Hope County, it’s just gotten worse.

It’s frustrating because you actually haven’t done it for a long time. You thought you’d stopped. You made a point of paying too much money for manicures, a financial incentive to keep your fingers in working condition. The other rookies made fun of you, but you ignored them, doing good work and proving that having attractive fingers was not a detriment to fighting crime. When you slap the cuffs on Joseph Seed, he glances at your coffin nails, painted matte black with gloss on the ring fingers.

“Vanity,” he murmurs, and it might feel like the sin he labels it as if that was why you’d done it.

You chip a nail in the helicopter crash. By the time you’ve liberated Dutch’s island, it’s gone, along with all the polish on your other nails, picked off. Your hands are always busy, always holding something - a gun, a shovel, a radio - so you don’t know when it’s happening. All you know is that it’s happening again; your anxiety is taking physical form in the gradual degradation of your fingers. You try to think more consciously about when your hands are near your mouth. You shove them in your pockets when you can. You holster your gun less, keeping it out for something to hold.

Still, your nails are bitten to the quick by the time Faith falls into the river and washes away.

For a time, there is nothing left to bite, to chew, and you are thankful for it. Still, you try preventing further damage. You tape your hands, and the substance burns and rips and dessicates before it can prove to be any use. Gloves make it hard to handle your weapons and are easily lost. But the Seed siblings are keeping you very busy, and for a time you are entirely occupied with other things, like rescuing diabetic bears.

Then Jacob hunts you down, puts you through training, and the Whitetails bring your not-quite-dead body back to their base. By the time you wander back out into the woods, you notice you have a hangnail, and brush at the offender absently with your thumb.

Brushing becomes picking, becomes biting, becomes chewing and _ripping_ , and when you wake up in a cage for the second time, your fingers are a mess of stinging cuticles and open, raw skin.

Joseph comes, tells you of his wife and daughter, and by the time he leaves you’ve scraped off any developing scabs with your teeth and almost entirely removed the paper-thin top layer from the skin of your thumb. You don’t even know you’re still doing it until Jacob snags you through the bars, pulls you close and grips both your wrists in the curl of one war-rough hand.

“You’re more of a pup than I thought you were,” he rumbles, rolling your fingers between his. His breath is hot and wet on the exposed skin, and you hate it.

“What does that mean?” you ask sullenly, trying to tug your hands away from his grip. It’s partly because you don’t want him touching you, and partly because you know there’s a tiny curl of loose skin on the top of your right pinkie finger. You want to peel it back, with what remains of your nails and then with your teeth, want to gnaw on it until it’s gone and a miniscule crevasse remains in what was once smooth, unblemished flesh, welling darker every second with angry red blood rushing to the surface.

“When they are stressed, wolves in captivity will chew on their own paws until they bleed. That’s what this is called,” he says. His ice-blue eyes flicker to stare into yours. “Wolfbiting.”

“It’s _called_ dermatophagia,” you retort. You’ve never been to a doctor for it - seems like a stupid thing to go to the doctor about - but you’ve looked it up online, recognized your own symptoms in a Wikipedia article. “And it’s fine. I had it under control before you and your lunatic family turned this place into a war zone. I’ll get it under control again.” You leave _after I kill you_ , or something similar, left unsaid.

Something changes in Jacob’s gaze. It softens, just slightly, like he’s empathizing with your words. Before you can think about it too much, he lets you go, and you stumble back into the cage.

“Just gotta give you something else to chew on,” he says decisively. You’ve barely opened your mouth to ask _what the hell does that mean_  when you hear it, hear the song. Your gaze flies wildly to Pratt and the box he's holding, and then you wash into a murky red haze of unconsciousness.

When you wake up, your fingers are bound in medical tape that you learn the hard way has been soaked in some kind of foul-tasting substance, making it impossible to tear with your teeth. Someone has written on your arm in permanent marker, jagged block letters marring the smooth brown of your skin.

GOOD DOGS DON'T BITE.

And, along your other arm:

UNTIL THEY'RE TOLD TO.

As you flex your fingers through the tape, you can't help but notice that they don't hurt anymore.


End file.
